


I Walk This Empty Street (On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams)

by Anonymous



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Anxiety, Autism Spectrum, Character Study, Gen, Social Anxiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:59:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22778317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: "It's not that Reg doesn't want to connect with his fellow crew members, it's just that he can't. He doesn't like social interaction, hates the uncertainty in every word, the double meanings, inside jokes, hidden messages. He hates the fact that everyone expects you to instinctively know what the hell they're going on about, or the correct social cue or the right way to refer to them."
Comments: 5
Kudos: 23
Collections: Anonymous





	I Walk This Empty Street (On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "The Boulevard of Broken Dreams" by Green Day

It's not that Reg doesn't want to connect with his fellow crew members, it's just that he _can't_. He doesn't like social interaction, hates the uncertainty in every word, the double meanings, inside jokes, hidden messages. He hates the fact that everyone expects you to instinctively _know_ what the hell they're going on about, or the correct social cue or the right way to refer to them. 

And the absolute worst thing is the expected eye contact. The expectation that eye contact is the foundation of trustworthiness, that avoiding eye contact is indicative of unreliability. And he wants to convey his honesty, it's just so _uncomfortable_ , looking into people's eyes. 

It's uneasy, the way they can see everything, and you can see everything - and the worst part about it is the _intimacy_ , the intimate eye contact makes him stammer and blush and look down because eye contact is _too much_ for him, he gets overwhelmed and anxious and he just really, really needs to calm down.

And it's all part of the reason why Reg became an engineer; to avoid talking to people, to avoid meeting new people, to avoid having to attend awkward parties where everyone knows everyone and he doesn't have anyone, to avoid meetings, conferences, _confrontation_. He decided to become an engineer when he was just fifteen, struggling to communicate with his classmates and garnering his teachers’ attention as slightly slow when it comes to people but a genius in his work.

He didn’t expect to fall in love with the work, and not his habit of falling in love with fictional characters every other week, not his habit of obsessing over things until all he knows are random facts and statistics about one thing, forgetting to eat and sleep and bathe and not doing what he’s meant to do to a good standard, or missing deadlines. 

He legitimately fell in love with systems and programming and fixing things and thinking up a solution that won’t be theoretical, it’ll actually work. It’s like he can see the possibilities of how to fix things in his mind like the model is actually there. 

And that’s where the holodeck came in. It made things he thought up _real_ , it made the immaterial, material, and it made the thoughts racing through his head slow down just a bit, just enough for Reg to get his bearings and work through doing normal things like eating, sleeping and bathing. 

It’s when he gets assigned to Starfleet that his problems with talking to people and communicating effectively catch up to him - fortunately, on his first posting, he manages to get by without really speaking to anyone, fading into the background and relying more and more on the holodeck to get through the day, channelling his emotions and frustrations and _loneliness_ the only way he knows how, building his confidence around the fantasy worlds he creates out of his mind, the only worlds that _feel_ real to him. The only worlds where his mannerisms aren’t _strange_.

The _Enterprise_ is a totally different story. He’s expected to befriend the crew members, expected to be _fine_ with being degraded in front of his commanding officers, with being forced to speak up and _talk_ , with being fine being talked about like he isn’t there, with being told to _listen_ to others when he already _is_ listening. His first week is hellish, and it doesn’t get much better after that. The holodeck is no longer a coping mechanism, rather, it’s an escape from his personal perdition to a place where he can shout and scream at those who have wronged him, at those who have stood by and let him be ignored, let his suffering be normalised.

And maybe it was meant to make him feel better - and it does in that moment - but the minute he steps out, the minute he utters the words “Computer, end program,” he’s anxiety-ridden, dreading the next few hours, wishing that he didn’t have to go to his shift, _guilty_ for the absolute violation of privacy he’s inflicting upon innocent people who don’t know any better and who mean no harm. It’s _torturous_ , the way he _longs_ to be back in the only safe space on this entire ship - _counting_ his quarters.

The next thing he knows, he’s got a _nickname_ from the engineering crowd, led by the one-and-only _boy wonder,_ Wesley Crusher. A little brat with way too much leeway and a healthy dose of arrogance to boot, it makes Reg want to _vomit_ , seeing a spoiled _kid_ who’s never seen a day of suffering, of lacking self-confidence. It makes Reg want to cry because here he is, twenty-five, graduated from Starfleet Academy, being shown up by a seventeen-year-old who wasn’t seen a day of real work in his life. 

He’s put under pressure, under intense scrutiny from Lt. Commander La Forge Commander Riker, _humiliated_ by his Captain, and, furthermore, being forced to visit Counsellor Troi, who’s so _beautiful_ and _compassionate_ and _understanding_. And then she isn’t, turning the lights low, sitting too close, about to _touch him_ and Reg _hates_ being touched without consent, hates the feeling of someone that close to him, hates the feeling of bugs _crawling_ under his skin, the knowledge that they’re so close they could _hurt you_. 

And it’s all he can do to get away, to escape and calm down or ride out the panic attack somewhere where he can’t be seen. And he runs away, _gripping_ his sleeves, most of his hands hidden like they can hide the trembling in his hands; like they can ground him to this reality, not the fantasy escape he needs to cope with going out there to face the day, to face the crew of the _USS Enterprise_ , to face the disdain and judgement he gets just for being _different_ , for not confining to their messed-up ideas of normal, where normal is getting back up again with nary a scratch, where normal is refusing to show negative emotion beyond anger and displeasure, where normal is being _perfect_ at absolutely everything with no exceptions.

And then he’s _invaded_ , his only escape, the only place he was safe, is taken, stolen, away from him, like it’s a thing that can be managed. _His_ holodeck is no more his than anything on this ship, everything replicated from the same atoms, all belonging to someone else, and it hurts, to have his creation stripped from being material, _destroyed_ from existence. And _he_ created that program! He thought it up, he constructed it from the very basics into something that worked, he created his own physics, his own people, his own atoms, his own personalities. He created his own personal box, where no one was awful to him and he could have the confidence to stand up for himself.

And he hates it when Lt. Commander La Forge tells him that he was glad he was out there, in the real world, because he wasn’t. His real world is in the holodeck, in what he’s created to be himself because he _can’t_ be himself, not out here, not out where everyone laughs at him, taunts him because of his inability to communicate with the other crew members. And it’s not that he doesn’t _want_ to talk to them, to be friends with them, it’s that he _can’t_. The only things he’s good for are maths and programming and engineering and systems and all he is is a systems diagnostics engineer on the _USS Enterprise-D_ , and he’s not _built_ for communicating, for talking to people, for _anything_ others are good for.

He thinks that he’s better off in the holodeck, in the fantasy, in the place where he can’t get hurt. But some people think otherwise, and there’s nothing _he_ can really do to stop them, not when he’s apparently “proven” himself by thinking up a solution to a relatively simple problem, not when he’s been accepted by the higher-ups, not when they have so much power over him it scares him. 

And it scares him a lot. It, frankly, _terrifies_ him. Along with the expected social interaction that comes with being known by name in the bridge - he can’t leave the _Enterprise_ now, not when he’s been assimilated into being “one-of-them” and, anyway, he can acclimatise, can’t he? He’s dealt with worse circumstances and the _USS Enterprise_ is hardly a party where he has to look _comfortable_ talking to the potted plant in the corner. 


End file.
